Name's Jason Thibeault. I'm an IT guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS, science of all stripes (especially space-related stuff), and debating on-line and off. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

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EVENTS

Tories made 6,000,000 calls, had two lists, refuse to give records to Elections Canada.

I have nothing but swear words.

…

Okay, maybe I have a bit more than swear words. I have other choice words I can use to label Dean Del Mastro, like “hypocrite”, “delusional”, and possibly “mendacious”.

Here’s a link about the “thousands of calls” he placed himself. And about the “two lists”, they’re definitely doing targeting, and they’re moving people from one demographic group to another when they realize they’re not talking to someone sympathetic. Here’s an example.

57 ridings received misleading robo-calls, that we know of. That’s how badly they wanted this power to ramrod five years worth of Conservative policies into place — even if this election was 100% in the bag for them, THEY STILL CHEATED. And they’re yelling and screaming for the Libs and NDP to show their phone records while they themselves refuse to account for their own activities.

Harper and his government have evidently subverted democracy. Whether or not this swayed a single vote, it shows exactly what these people are capable of, and to exactly what depths they’ll stoop.

I have a co-worker who voted Conservative because he figured that way, things would get done. His sole reason for voting Conservative was to prevent the legislative deadlock that sometimes happens when you have a minority government and one side wants to do batshit-crazy things to the economic and social infrastructure, and the other says “no way”. He voted Tory because he wanted someone to exercise unilateral control of the government, unchecked, and he picked the guys who were willing to cheat to get power.

I sometimes grind my teeth in fury that someone could be willingly complicit, and I can’t even yell at them for it.

Comments

Here’s a reasonable solution that will never happen: Vacate all the ridings where the calls occured and have by-elections. If the rightwingnuts won legitimately the first time, then they’ll have no problem winning again. And if the called altered the results, then Canadians deserved to have the government it wanted. Better to spend tens of thousands on by-elections than lose millions on corrupt government policies.

Those who say “minority governments cause deadlock” are ignorant and complicit, or just ignorant. Minority governments lead to concensus because the largest party cannot simply have its way. It also reduces corruption because it’s difficult for corporations – at the same time – to bribe different parties with different philosophies. That’s the whole reason the US political system is so corrupt, it’s always a majority government.

I like minority governments in principle. Several differing political views forced to work together is more likely to produce realistic solutions rather than solutions based on idealistic extremes. Society is made up of a compromise between many differing world-views and a democratic government should reflect the society from which it comes.

What pisses me off is that with only 24% of us voting for the Conservatives (39% of the 60% who voted), Harper is allowed to say, over and over, that he represents a majority of Canadians. (His favourite phrase is, “Canadians have given us a clear mandate.”)

I don’t see what’s clear about that, so why doesn’t everyone in the Opposition remind him over and over that 76% of Canadians did NOT vote for him?

The thing is all those people who didn’t vote in Conservative won ridings de facto voted for the Conservatives. It doesn’t matter what political views they hold, it’s as if they walked into the voting booth and put their X beside the Conservative candidate’s name.

There’s no proof of that — maybe non-voters are just apolitical folks.

And even assuming that the non-voters’ votes had been distributed in the same proportions as the voters’ votes, what’s-his-name would still not have a majority. As far as I remember from grade 2, 61 is a bigger number than 39. Clear mandate, my eye!

there’s a huge case to be made for proportional representation based on they way our system works.

It’s very clear that the majority of Canadians do not support the policies being enacted by Harper, but he is free to go ahead with no checks.

I’d also like to see a senate which was both elected, and all members of which are forced to give up any party affiliation to be allowed to serve. This would provide a needed check on parliamentary power.

In any case, I’m truly hopeful that the general electorate hasn’t forgetten this by the time the next election rolls around. Whether it effected the outcome or not, this is the most despicable tactic I’ve ever heard of.

One only needs to look to our neighbours to the south to see how well an elected Senate works; it doesn’t.

The unelected, appointed, Senate is vital to our democracy. The Senate, in theory, is supposed to be the check and balance to the laws put forth by the Members of Parliament, who themselves are elected and must therefore pander to their voters. The Senate’s job is supposed to go through those laws and look for violations of existing laws and Constitutional rights, in effect their job is to ensure the laws put forth are sane and make sense and don’t impinge on rights and freedoms we already enjoy.

If they don’t they’re supposed to go back down to the floor for corrections. I can’t remember the last time the Senate did their job though, but making them elected will just make it even worse because now they have to pander to their electorates too! Instead of just getting rubber stamped laws like we get now, we’ll get laws with crap added by the Senate for the sole reason of helping the Senators get re-elected. Think the calls of “legislating from the Senate” are bad now when Harper doesn’t get his way, wait until the Senate has to show they’re doing something in order to get elected themselves!

I do like your Proportional Representation idea though, I always though it was a little crazy how parties that got 10% of the votes didn’t get 10% of the seats. I’d go one further though, PR with a stipulation that your party must run a candidate in 90% of all ridings and must win a minim of 5% of the vote [keeps out the fringes and the regional parties who’s sole function is to waste federal funds bolstering local agendas at the expense of the nation] before you’d earn any seats.

I’d also like to see a senate which was both elected, and all members of which are forced to give up any party affiliation to be allowed to serve. This would provide a needed check on parliamentary power.

What’s the difference between a senator who is party X and a senator who WAS party X but now totally pinkie-swears they’re not? The batch appointed in the last few years do Harper’s bidding because they want to, not because they’re CPC.